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EARLY WOODCUT
"modest, but well-designed" seems fully justified; indeed, if it errs, it
would seem to do so on the conservative side.
As mentioned before, only two such woodcut compositions are
known to exist, while many other devotional-allegorical subjects, such
as the Heart of Christ and the Monogram of Christ, were infinitely more
popular in the fifteenth century, as is borne out by the long list in
Schreiber's Handbuch (nos. 1786 ff.). Nor do I know of anything fully
comparable in other media. True, in a late fifteenth-century Book of
Hours (Sarum Rite) in the Allen Art Museum," which, according to the
research conducted by Mrs. Nancy Horton McCarthy, was written in
England (probably Salisbury) and illuminated in a Franco-Flemish
workshop, prayers to the Five Wounds of Christ — so popular in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries — are accompanied by small square
miniatures representing each of the Wounds separately on the corresponding part of the body; but the hands are not shown in the gesture of
benediction and are placed sideways on circles which are not conceived
as nimbi. Furthermore, the example of these illuminations clearly
shows that our roundel cannot be explained as "the" natural result of
devotional concentration on the Hand of Christ. Obviously, the designer arrived at this particular form of image by a different, and less direct
road — one which is connected with some particular pictorial tradition.
In considering this road, we shall also have to remember that, according
to the testimony of the inscriptions, the print was thought of as an image
of the Hand of God the Father as much as of Christ.
The Hand of God as a universally recognized symbol of God the
Father in biblical scenes was of course a medieval phenomenon par excellence and was far from being defunct at the time when our print was
made. Dextera Dei — as it is still called in our verse — as the acting "person" of God in such scenes as Christ receiving the message of His impending martyrdom on the Mount of Olives is still found in the fourteenth century and later, and indeed usually in the same gesture of
benediction, which was inherited from the early and high middle ages.
Its occurrence in the Passional of the Abbess Cunigunde in the
Prague University Library {ca. 1320) may be cited here because it suggests consideration of a group of works which, being less narrative and
more symbolic in scope, take us closer to our particular problem. A page
of this famous manuscript" shows the Man of Sorrows amidst the Anna
8 Ace. No. 42.137; gift of Carl Spitzer in Toledo, Ohio.
9 A. Matejcek, Le passionaire de Vabbesse Cunegonde, Prague, 1922; this page
(fol. 10 r.) also reproduced in R. Berliner, "Bemerkungen zu einigen Darstel-
11

EARLY WOODCUT
"modest, but well-designed" seems fully justified; indeed, if it errs, it
would seem to do so on the conservative side.
As mentioned before, only two such woodcut compositions are
known to exist, while many other devotional-allegorical subjects, such
as the Heart of Christ and the Monogram of Christ, were infinitely more
popular in the fifteenth century, as is borne out by the long list in
Schreiber's Handbuch (nos. 1786 ff.). Nor do I know of anything fully
comparable in other media. True, in a late fifteenth-century Book of
Hours (Sarum Rite) in the Allen Art Museum," which, according to the
research conducted by Mrs. Nancy Horton McCarthy, was written in
England (probably Salisbury) and illuminated in a Franco-Flemish
workshop, prayers to the Five Wounds of Christ — so popular in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries — are accompanied by small square
miniatures representing each of the Wounds separately on the corresponding part of the body; but the hands are not shown in the gesture of
benediction and are placed sideways on circles which are not conceived
as nimbi. Furthermore, the example of these illuminations clearly
shows that our roundel cannot be explained as "the" natural result of
devotional concentration on the Hand of Christ. Obviously, the designer arrived at this particular form of image by a different, and less direct
road — one which is connected with some particular pictorial tradition.
In considering this road, we shall also have to remember that, according
to the testimony of the inscriptions, the print was thought of as an image
of the Hand of God the Father as much as of Christ.
The Hand of God as a universally recognized symbol of God the
Father in biblical scenes was of course a medieval phenomenon par excellence and was far from being defunct at the time when our print was
made. Dextera Dei — as it is still called in our verse — as the acting "person" of God in such scenes as Christ receiving the message of His impending martyrdom on the Mount of Olives is still found in the fourteenth century and later, and indeed usually in the same gesture of
benediction, which was inherited from the early and high middle ages.
Its occurrence in the Passional of the Abbess Cunigunde in the
Prague University Library {ca. 1320) may be cited here because it suggests consideration of a group of works which, being less narrative and
more symbolic in scope, take us closer to our particular problem. A page
of this famous manuscript" shows the Man of Sorrows amidst the Anna
8 Ace. No. 42.137; gift of Carl Spitzer in Toledo, Ohio.
9 A. Matejcek, Le passionaire de Vabbesse Cunegonde, Prague, 1922; this page
(fol. 10 r.) also reproduced in R. Berliner, "Bemerkungen zu einigen Darstel-
11

Identifier

AMAM_Bulletin_014_001_0013.tif

Rights

For research and educational use only. For all other uses please contact Allen Memorial Art Museum